


illegal aliens in rural kansas in post trump america

by SDCDCI



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fem!Clark Kent - Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, but set in the late-ish '10s rather '00s, not between the main characters, still with superpowers and metheor mutations and stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-03-23 15:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13790220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SDCDCI/pseuds/SDCDCI
Summary: It's hard to grow up in a rural Kansas if you are an alien. It's even worse when you're a girl.





	1. pilot

**Author's Note:**

> See the end notes re:warnings  
> re:title tho: it's more of a click-bait in the first chapter, but i will be touching on some relevant themes as the story goes.

It’s a couple of days, actually, until Clark sees him again.

She comes back from school, does her chores slowly – well, slowly for her, normal-human speed for everyone else. She feels on edge, she feels tired. Parents knew this huge thing about her and never said? Who does that? So she makes herself spending more time outside, less they try to talk to her one more time.

She doesn’t need to hear how it all was for her own good ever again. It would be better if they didn’t tell her ever, probably. She doesn’t think she could trust them ever again. They obviously do not know what is and isn’t good for her.

She idly plays with the idea of trying out for the football team after all when she hears the sound of a pick-up. She sees it right away, the pale pink monstrosity, and she likes the color as much as any other, but it just doesn’t fit. Who in the right mind would do something like that to perfectly fine car and perfectly nice color both?

She has to wait for an answer for a long ten minutes before the car stops in the yard.

Clearly, Lex Luthor has as little sense as it was implied by his driving.

In the course of the conversation it’s obvious she’s mistaken and he has even less sense. Because he intended the truck as a gift to her for saving his life. She wants to laugh for a moment, and says thank you but no thank you, and it’s only a little about how that she’s done was the right thing and everyone else would have done it (though she thinks privately, not everyone would have succeeded).

“Is it the paint job?” he asks thoughtfully. “It was custom-made. I, of course, can put an order to replace it with something else.”

Suddenly it pisses Clark off. Lately, almost everything pissed Clark off.

“No,” she says sourly, “it’s the thing where you thought if I’m a girl I would, of course, like the pink. I like the pink just fine, but you don’t know me and you couldn’t have guessed by looking at me, and it’s a ridiculous color for the car. It’s not MTV, it’s not my sweet sixteen for a year yet and you sure as hell isn’t my daddy.”

She doesn’t know why she has chosen that word, god, she’s so mortified. It’s not like she ever called Jonathan that, even when she was really little. Lex looks like he swallowed a lemon for a second, cringing at the wording as she did, but recovers more smoothly.

“My apologies,” he says. “I didn’t intend to offend you or hurt you in any way. Though talking to you made it obvious that the gift was a rushed decision and… not appropriate.”

“You don’t need to intend to hurt someone,” says Clark bitterly, crossing her arms, sticking her hands under armpits, not looking at Lex anymore. “You just need to not think about, about how… You just do what you think is right! And to hell what other people might think. Whether they have a right to choose for themselves!”

She almost shoots the last sentence, glaring at the house.

“Is this you telling me that you want to choose the paint for yourself or?..” asks Lex, humorlessly, and for a time Clark doesn’t know what to reply. She did say she won’t take the car anyway, right? It’s a shame, really, no matter how hideous looking, it’s new, and almost everyone has a car in her class, and that way she could get around on long distances without anyone getting suspicious. She sighs because she would really like to have a car. Maybe she could talk to her parents about getting an after-school job. Not here, in Smallville, of course, there’s not so much opening available. After her classes and after the chores were done, she could run to Metropolis and after her shift home again and still meet her curfew, probably.

Lex interrupts her train of thought:

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I won’t bother you again.”

And he smiles briefly and turns away, but his shoulders are stooped, so Clark feels bad. It’s not really him she’s pissed at, and she was incredibly rude to almost a stranger who didn’t do her anything bad – except crushed his car at her, but it’s not as she could hold the grudge if she’s fine, right?

“Wait!” she says, rushed, and abandons her work, steps closer to him. She doesn’t know exactly what to say. “You, erm, came all the way here? And it’s almost dinner.”

“Yes?” he slowly asks.

“Do you want to grab a bite? Or, or a coffee! Mom made cherry pie.” She babbles, she knows. What pie, stupid, he probably likes sophisticated, tasteless food, or that ridiculously expensive Swedish chocolate. Wait, switzerlandish? Whatever. Not pie. It’s stupid, the crust in her mother’s pie is to die for. He’s stupid. No, she is. “Or not. You probably are busy or whatever.”

“I don’t have a prior engagement, no,” he says lightly, and she takes him toward the house.

He strolls beside her confidently, and even the pressing silence where Clark feverishly thinks what to ask him and not to sound stupid doesn’t seem to affect him in any way.

Thank god mom is in the kitchen, and steps in the role of a good host immediately. Lex is seated, served the pie and a cup of coffee with a fair dose of milk, and peppered with good-natured but not invasive questions. Like, how does he find Smallville so far. How are things on the plant. How does he like his new role. Did he study management at Uni? No? When what and where? Turned out his post-graduate degree was in the same place as her mom’s, so they talk about that for a good half an hour before Jonathan comes home.  
In the retrospect, it could have gone better. But Jonathan asked about the car in a driveway, found out about Lex’s purpose for the visit, and.

“I don’t know who do you think you are,” he says, not hearing mom’s “Jonathan!”, “buying fifteen-year-old girls cars…”

“I wanted to show my gratitude to Clark for saving my life,” Lex says. His face, in contrast to Jonathan, is very blank.

“Maybe she shouldn’t have bothered,” says Jonathan, “if you think it is a normal thing to do for a grown man to go around buying expensive presents for underage girls. Of course, she will turn it down.”

And that pretty much was it. She was never that embarrassed in her life! Did her father imply that she thought he implied? That, that Lex had that kind of interest in her? And she, what, if even in some crazy universe – hell, if aliens were real, and she was apparently one of them, everything was possible, right? – it was true, she couldn’t take care of herself? Her, the most capable of taking care of herself in this same room?

Clark shoved her chair from the table and tagged on Lex’s sleeve.

“Keys,” she says.

It took only half a beat for Lex to catch on, and the other half he seemingly struggles with the decision. In the end, he excuses himself from the table and tells mom the pie was amazing and, finally, puts the keys in Clark’s still outstretched hand.

After that, Clark drudges him outside, very hastily, because she’s angry but not stupid and doesn’t want her father to catch up.

“Come on,” she says when they reach the end of the driveway, where the car is still parked, “I will drive you home. How did you even think to get back?”

“My driver was waiting not so far from here,” he says, putting his seatbelt on. “When you invited me in, I texted him to go home and that I will call for the car later.”

Clark hesitates a little before turning the key in the ignition. Lex asks, suspiciously:

“You do have a driver license, yes?”

Clark can’t help but laugh, and with that driving for the first time without an instructor supervision seems easy, and going against her father’s will for the first time, too.

“I don’t know who put you in charge of other people and stuff,” she says, “aren’t you businessmen supposed to be savvy and omnipotent and think things through first?”

Lex, who laughed alongside with her, abruptly stops.

“My father,” he says and stops. It takes him some time to start again. “In this way we are similar, you could say. Emotion-driven actions, when we think we could allow ourselves the privilege of having an emotion, or when we don’t think at all.”

He doesn’t sound like it’s a good thing, and it obviously is not, but there’s more to it. Clark wants to pry, what did he mean exactly, but can’t quite find words.  
“Fathers suck,” she offers weakly and sticks her fist for him to bump.

“Eyes on the road!” he says, anxiously, and she rolls her eyes but turns her gaze forward (after all, he was in a disastrous car accident three days ago, he is allowed to worry, it’s not a reflection of her skills or his thoughts on said skills), though does not put her fist down until he tentatively brush it with his. “But yes. It seems that is a common occurrence. You are not the first person who used me as a way to piss of their father.”

Clark cringes.

“About that. Sorry. Sometimes he says these things. It’s not about you.”

“Well, in retrospect, I can see how my actions could be viewed as questionable,” he says, doubtfully, as though he doesn’t, really, but he’s willing to accept it as an axiom. “And people could be not that they seem at the first glance, so he is right to worry.”

Clark doesn’t know how to explain that he really, really isn’t without sounding young and stupid. She knows that bad stuff happens. She knows that there are predators and rapists and worse. She knows that no one probably thinks it’s going to happen to them, that not your clothes, not your make-up or the lack of it, not your looks, not how you spend time or who you chose to send it with is a guaranty. It’s just won’t happen to her, though. Not with her power and speed and unbreakable skin.

“He doesn’t have to be a, a dick about it,” she says in the end.

It falls flat. Lex doesn’t offer anything more. She only half-relieved.

The other, anxious to be seen as cool and as ever making her look like a fool, says:

“I bet the other times were more pleasant,” and when Lex looking at her questioningly, elaborates, at the same time as his face shuts off in understanding that she meant because she apparently doesn’t know how to stop the weird shit that’s coming from her mouth. “You know? When other people used you to piss off their parents? Oh god, it was a joke, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said it.”

Lex clears his throat but even his smoothness seems to evaporate in the face of her awkwardness.

“It’s okay. I enjoyed the pie, at least.”

He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the ride except giving her directions, and she learned her lessons. She shuts up as well.

When she’s parked in front of his mansion, she takes the keys out and thrust them at Lex.

“I still can’t keep it,” she says apologetically.

“But how are you going to go home? Though I can call up the driver,” Lex says, but Clark shakes her head.

“I will just take a walk. I need it, to clear my head.”

“It’s late,” Lex says. “I can’t just let you walk all the way home, alone.”

“Well, it’s either that or me staying at your house forever,” she says, angry again and guilty for the outburst again. Her life is an emotional rollercoaster lately. How do you get off the ride?

She gets out and walks toward the gate, not looking back. Thankfully, Lex doesn’t pursue.

She takes a long road home. She visits graveyard and talks to Lana. Seeing Lana's grief making Clark feel just one more thing to feel guilty for when before it was awe and amazement and Clark isn't sure what else, exactly. But she wants to feel it again, she wants Lana to smile again, so she tries to cheer her up, and it works. At least, Lana thanks her and kisses her on a cheek. Clark offers to walk her home, it is pretty late, after all, but Lana declines politely.

Clark is left alone with her thoughts, and she actively makes herself think about Lex, as an alternative to thinking about her parents, or her true parents, or how she got here and wrecked other people's lives in the process. Comparing to that, thinking about the only person you saved is pleasant. They probably never see each other again, and she doesn't know if she supposed to feel sad about it or indifferent.

 

But they see each other pretty soon.  
He finds her in the field, naked, battered, tied to the cross and calls the police.

Remember how no one thinks it’s gonna happen to them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rape mentioned, but not described, in the last few sentences of the 1st chapter. Assult on Clark from the pilot goes even worse, but it is not shown, just hinted at.


	2. Metamorphosis, pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and reviews are always helpful. Thank you those who will drop a few words below in advance.  
> Check the end notes to see if there is something that will be triggering for you.
> 
> The first part of this chapter was written in the February, but to continue was too hard for me for a long time. I hope it doesn't show.

She doesn’t remember that night very well. Some bits, sure, tend to assault her again and again at seemingly random occurrences. But her statement is a jumbled hysterical mess, probably, she isn’t sure even about that.

She rides in the ambulance alone, of course. Lex is still being questioned, and besides, who he is to her? Random witness to the worst night of her life. By the time she has gotten to the hospital, her wounds are healed, and her parents are there. She almost runs away.

She’s still thinking about running away when the doctor, gentle woman who offered to Clark to call her Helen, does her thing with the rape kit. Dr. Bruce talks the whole time, explaining the process giving them both something to focus on, something neutral. It’s not her usual assignment, she tells, but the hospital is overflown with patients. Some kind of attack on Homecoming dance.

Clark wills herself not to think about it. Because if only she stayed away from Lana, Whitney wouldn’t have gone after her. She would be there, and she would be able to save everyone.

It’s useless, to think about it. Almost like pressing charges. She does both things anyway.

When she is home, she rings to Chloe, to ask if she’s alright, if Pete is. Thankfully, they both are.

Later, she will found out that two of her rapists became victims of Jeremy Creek, though. It doesn’t feel her heart with joy or whatever for some sweet poetic justice, because it’s not only them he managed to electrocute before he died. Some kids are in the hospital. Some of them, mainly from the football team, is dead. Jeremy himself was shot by the officers who responded to the distress call. And she still sees Whitney in the school halls, after his suspension is lifted. The court date is far away.

But all of it will be much later. And now, Chloe asks where the hell she was, and how she could have missed it, not that Chloe wasn’t glad she’s okay and weren’t in danger of being stun-gunned down by the maniac, “because it’s the official party line, I gather, they are telling people he had a stun-gun, but it’s bullshit, his hands were empty, and if that isn’t a perfect example of my Wall of Weird, I don’t know what it is”, finishes Chloe.

And it hits Clark that it is just another thing she is responsible for. Her meteors changed Jeremy, made him capable of doing those things.

Her mom, when she’s sobbing in her arms, tells her to remember Orlando and Sandy Hook and Las Vegas. If someone wants to kill other people, they will find a way. Clark is comforted for all of half a second before she remembers that if there weren’t guns around it sure as hell would be harder. Green rocks are guns, and she, Clark, is NRA.

She doesn’t tell it to her mother. She is tired, she goes to sleep.

There's supposed to be a fair the next day. She doesn’t know if it is still happening or not. Her parents stay home. She puts her headphones on so she could block out their hashed arguing. They are arguing about her.

Mom comes up with the lunch, waking her up again. Clark responds with “I’m fine” and “No” to every question about how is she feeling and whether she needs something. Her mom leaves the lunch tray on her computer table. Clark wants to sleep again, but it doesn’t come.

She sets the lunch tray aside, does her homework, even the essay that is due in two weeks.

It’s hard to sit still. She goes out and does chores. Her share, her father’s. He tries to talk to her. “Don’t say anything,” she pleads, and when he opens his mouth anyway, she speeds up on the other side of the field.

Pete called, her mother tells her at the dinner. Chloe came by. Lex Luthor called to ask if they need anything, a doctor, a lawyer or a therapist. Her father looks as though he wants to say something, but he shuts his mouth under the glare of mom.

She hears a crush. It's a good excuse to get the hell out from the table if there are any, so she speeds up to where the sound came from.

It's Whitney's truck. Clark sees him inside. The car is catching fire.

It seems like fate. There isn't any need for the trial, then. There isn't any need to relieve last night ever again, telling the cops, the DA's office, the court... It will be over in a moment. Blink and you missed it fast. She's not a vengeful person. If she was, she would have saved Whitney, so he would face what he has done and the people's reaction to it. But she could deal with him being dead, with all of them being dead. Yes, it's fate alright. How else would he crush his car near her house? So she could see him die? What was he even doing here?

But her mind misfires. Her memory brings up another car crash she was around recently. Was that fate too? Was she not supposed to rescue Lex Luthor, too?

And then she thinks about the school dance. Were these kids supposed to die, too, so Clark could get her revenge on Whitney's goons? No. That's not a payoff she finds acceptable. If it is fate, she doesn't want it.

She hauls Whitney off from the fire-breathing truck and into the grass. She isn't sure if he's breathing or not. Thinks about performing CPR, but that is somehow too much.

Her parents, she detects distantly, only now getting onto the porch, calling for her, noticing the flames, Mom goes back inside, probably to call for the fire department, Dad runs to her.

Time is a funny thing, Clark thinks. She looked at the car for an eternity, she thinks, before getting Whitney out of the cabin. She looks at him, laying in the grass, eyes closed almost peacefully, and in between one of her breath and another, there are other people around her, fire truck. Police.

Ambulance.

"What was he doing here, at night?" asks a police officer.

It's probably the same one from the night before, but she isn't sure.

"I'm not sure," she says.

"If we check his cellphone, will we find something you're not telling us?" he insists, clearly getting at something. "Like text or messages between you two?"

"Why would he text me?" she says, and it takes for half a second to come to the realization. "You think I flipped his car while he was driving or something?"

Would make sense if he knew what she certainly capable of this. Only not, because she saved him, dammit.

"Just covering all the bases," replies the officer. "His parents or his girlfriend don't have the slightest idea what he was doing on the road to your house."

"Me neither," she says, and thankfully her Mom leads her away then, telling the policeman that if they have any further question they could stop by in the morning.

It's not fair, Clark thinks. She deserves a medal for this, and it seems that all she will get is an interrogation.

In the morning she has to get to school. Her parents are the reason she won't stay home, their hushed conversation behind closed doors. "But what he was doing there, Martha?". "But how did his car crash? There weren't any tire marks". And "Would you really blame her, Jonathan?", "She did get the boy out of the truck before it blown up". And in the morning they wouldn't meet her eyes.

So she says she wants to go to school, to just feel normal again. Ha, normal is so far out of her reach it could very well be on another planet. But it's the reason she gives when she declines their offer to drive her to school.

For once she isn't late for the bus. And inside, she instantly regrets it.

It seems as though everyone is staring at her. She puts her headphones on so she wouldn't hear whatever their hushed whispers are about.

Do they know? How do they know? What exactly do they know?

Do Chloe and Pete know, now? Does Lana? Teachers?

She obsesses over it on the ride there.

But the school greets her with solemn black banners, and more hushed conversations, and they all about Homecoming.

Also, in the hallway, there's a line to sign-up sheet for the football team tryouts. A lot of boys are stopping there, before going to the gym there the mass school gathering is taking place before the first class. She notices Pete in the line, too.

"It's like honoring the fallen, Clark", he says, and Clark almost throws up.

She finds Chloe and they sit together.

"Are you okay?" asks Chloe.

Clark resignedly closes her eyes. How exactly she found out? Maybe, it's Pete. Pete's Mom is a judge. But why would then Pete sign up for the tryouts? Maybe Chloe meant something else entirely?

And then the talks start.

Clark sits through it quietly almost to the end. They are not for her. She didn't feel quite the same horror as they, did she? She didn't see anyone dying before her eyes, at least. That's something. Maybe, communal prayer will help all of them to pull through. Maybe school pride would.

But when the coach steps to the microphone and talks about the Championship, and how if they will win, it will be in the memory of all who died or were hurt at the Homecoming dance. And Whitney, at his word, stands up from where he apparently was sitting with the remains of that was the football team, and goes to him, to read some lines of his own.

No worse for wear, just some scratches and cuts and a little unsteadiness on his legs.

He still, apparently, alive. He still, obviously, the captain.

Of course, he is! Who they would replace him with, thinks Clark.

She sneaks out from the gym and goes to the tryout sign up sheet. There, she writes down her name.

After all, maybe they don't know. In a few months (hopefully, no more than the rest of the school year, though Clark doesn't have experience with these things, she would need to check with Mrs. Ross about how fast the trial process is) they will need a new captain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the rape described, school shootings mentioned.


	3. Metamorphosis, pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a small chapter. Comments and reviews are always helpful. Thank you those who will drop a few words below in advance.  
> Check the end notes to see if there is something that will be triggering for you.

Whitney tries to accost her in the hallway.

"Did you send him?" he half-screams, getting at her face, at her nerves.

She covers. She didn't ever cover before anybody, ever.

She looks up and down the school corridor. Lana's talking with Greg. 'Rescue me, please' she sends to them a look, but telepathy, it would seem, is not one of her special alien superpowers. Lana tries to go to them, but Greg stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

At the same moment, Whitney's hands are at her. She is slammed into a locker. At the impact, she closes her eyes and stops to process any audio or sensual input as well. She's back on the field. Somewhere, a cow mooing.

Maybe, it takes five minutes, maybe five seconds, maybe five thousand years, but when she opens her eyes, Ms. Atkins has Whitney by the other row of the lockers, his expression stupid, her expression pissed off.

"To the principal's office, now," she commands.

She looks at both of them.

Chloe - when did she get here? - asks, her voice high:

"What? Clark didn't do anything! He came at her! He spewed all sorts of bullshit! He's unhinged! We all saw it!"

"And she will be going to tell her side of the story. You can help Ms. Kent get there, Ms. Sullivan," says Ms. Atkins. She trails off with Whitney in tow. She clearly expects them to listen.

"This is such a bullshit," says Chloe. "In Metropolis, he would be out of the school in a one-two-three. But Smallville? No, he's a star of a football team. More than that, a boy, boys will be boys, right?"

"Hey, I'm a boy," says Pete.

Where did he come from? Seriously, what's with Clark and situational awareness right now? She feels slightly guilty for jumping two feet high and to the side. She doesn't know whose locker was that, but good luck opening it up, now.

She quickly wipes off tears and sort of flaps her arms uselessly.

"I'm okay," she says and goes to the principal's office.

Chloe and Pete stay to wait outside while Clark, Whitney, and Ms. Atkins come inside.

Ms. Atkins looks less pissed off, more controlled. Whitney looks sullen, as though it's Clark who assaulted him on the school grounds, not the other way around. The principal looks bored.

"I don't think Mr. Fordman in his fragile state of health could do any damage upon her person, Ms. Atkins," he says. "I don't see what the big deal is."

Ms. Atkins says, "You are aware of the investigation opened against Mr. Fordman? You are aware of the crime he committed against Ms. Kent?"

"Is there no such thing as benefit of the doubt? Is it what we are trying to teach the kids nowadays?"

"Teach the kids," mouths Ms. Atkins and closes her eyes for a second.

Clark keeps track of all her movements. She's the easiest thing to keep her eyes on.

"Ms. Kent," says Ms. Atkins suddenly, not looking away from the principal. "You are free to go. Mr. Fordman, wait outside of the office."

And Clark gets the hell out of this dodge.

She almost speeds past people who wait outside - Chloe, Pete, Lana.

She waits until her friends catch up with her. Lana stays with Whitney.

That's how Whitney gets a suspension from school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Whitney slamming Clark into the locker.


	4. Metamorphosis, pt 3

At the end of the day, Clark regrets everything.

She regrets putting her name on the sign-up sheet. Now she needs to get her parents signature on a permission slip for the try-out to follow-through, and she knows it would be impossible. He will probably call her stupid. Maybe he will even wonder what she's trying to accomplish here, young lady, aren't the troubles she got herself in already is enough? Mom's reaction is fifty-fifty. She can tsk at her father with admonishing "Johanatan" as easily as take Clark's hand in hers with "Your Dad only wants you to be safe". Safe is no longer Clark thinks she could feel, not really, even if rationally she knows there is nothing to fear: daylight, public place, staying away from Lana Lang's green necklace is as good as an armor.

She regrets coming to school at all. She blocks out whispers that follow her around, even if what she does manage to catch seems to be only about the fight in the school hall. By Whitney's paranoid breakdown, rumors about her being connected to the assault at the school dance begin to fly easily from mouth to mouth. Clark doesn't know if it's all that worse than the alternative.

One thing she doesn't regret is befriending Pete and Chloe. They don't try to ask her anything. She almost convinces herself they don't know anything. In the end, it doesn't seem to matter if they continue to keep the matter dropped.

She did decline Pete's offer of walking her home, though, and that, her desire to keep things as seemingly normal as she could, Clark regrets. At her defense, she didn't expect Lana waiting for her outside. As soon as Clark sees her, though, she takes off in another direction. Because Lana's face is determined. Because Lana was literally at Whitney's side, before, at the principal office. Because police would have to talk to Lana, surely, if they wanted to establish the timeline for that night, and they probably would have told her what's it all about. They also asked Lana why Whitney was going to Clark's house. It seems obvious now, why did he, and that's another reason Clark tries to non-conspicuously speed away without letting away she has super speed. There's no way Whitney didn't share his version of the Homecoming with his girlfriend. Clark has a rough idea about what he had told her.

Where are the fucking corners and shadows and all the other things you could hide from sight for a moment so you could use your freakish x-menish abilities to get the hell out of the conversation you're not ready to participate in. That's what Clark thinks when Lana's hand on her shoulder stops her short.

Clark is not ready for her long-time crash to become a huge and personal part of rape culture.

"Hey," says Lana.

She doesn't sound accusing yet.

"I don't know how to start," starts Lana. She's doing just fine in Clark opinion. The one thing that would make it all better if Lana didn't start anything at all. "But police visited my house. Twice. And not about... what happened to us at the dance. Both times they were asking about you and Whitney."

She makes a slight pause after every sentence and the last one has a slightly questioning intonation. Clark looks ahead of the road. If only she was twenty minutes earlier. Lana wouldn't have started anything on the school bus ride. It would be worth the effort of listening to the static of her broken MP3 radio player blocking everyone else.

"I don't know how to ask you," says Lana. "I... asked Whitney. He told me that happened."

Clark's head moves out of her own volition. Of course, she expected it, she's not really surprised. Still. She takes stock of Lana's expression. Clark can't decide if she's trying to be serious but her smile still shows from under the thin veneer of concern, or if she tries to smile, like only Lana Lang always tries, and fails spectacularly.

Lana reads something on the blank face of Clark's, or she tries to fight awkwardness of them staring at each other in silence because she continues.

"He told me that guys from his team played a mean prank at you. Tied you to a cross, like a scarecrow, something of a tradition for the team. That it was dumb, but they were drinking before the school dance, so. They did it. And you called the cops, and after they didn't take you seriously, you called Jeremy Creek."

Nothing Clark didn't figure he would say. She still gulps the air and looks at her feet. Her face is doing something, she feels; but doesn't know what. Her eyes feel strange, unnaturally hot.

It's a fucking relief Greg stumbles upon them and distracts Lana. Or tries to, because as Clark makes one, two, three wide steps forward, Lana's calling her name. Clark hears Greg murmuring something about homework or a project or something. She doesn't really care. She doesn't really care that he didn't acknowledge her in any form, even if they were hanging out almost every day when they were at primary school. Greg's tree house probably still has her initials carved on the ceiling. She almost thanks God for allowing them to grow apart, so he would be obsessed with his bugs and Lana and show up at an opportune moment and not notice Clark starting to cry. It's a relief to leave Lana behind.

Before she hears how angry his voice is getting.

Her hearing allows Clark to know what he's putting her arm on Lana's, to stop her from following Clark. And Clark should really be grateful.

Clark goes back faster than she allowed herself when she was trying to get away from Lana.

She doesn't look at either of them.

"Let's talk," she says to Lana. "I will walk you home."

She regrets her poor impulse control later when they do talk, but she knows Lana doesn't. Even, in the end, Clark is certain that it's the last Lana talks directly to Clark.


	5. Metamorphosis, pt 4

How do you tell the girlfriend of the boy who  
Who  
Who  
Well. She can't even say it in the privacy of her own mind. She's pretty much doomed, isn't she?

So Clark walks beside Lana, and take full lungs of breath, because starting is the worst, right? You should always just do it, right, and then continue, and then end the thing you're doing. So she breaths in, slowly - and breaths out, very very quickly.

"Why did you return, if you don't want to talk?" Lana asks in the end.

Clark hesitates but then tells her the truth.

"Didn't seem like you wanted to talk to Greg," she murmurs.

"He only wanted to discuss our homework project, we're doing it together," Lana says, "What were you trying to do, protect me from getting a good grade in AP Bio?"

It's stupid when Lana lays everything out like that. Clark doesn't like feeling stupid. Feeling stupid makes some people angry, and some people anxious, Clark noticed. And Clark just feels like that's another thing she doesn't get, like another thing she fails to understand about the human experience, about being a human. Now she knows she has a good reason for it. It doesn't make her feel any better.

It doesn't make her feel any worse, though. Maybe there's a limit to how much worse you could feel. Is there? Or maybe she just built that way. Her emotions will shut down when there's a risk of overload.

Nah. She's not a cyborg, she's an alien.

"Sorry," Clark says.

Lana is right, probably. Clark is being paranoid. Maybe because what happened to her. Maybe because it's Lana. Maybe because she's Clark. And Lana is human and she probably knows better.

But Lana surprises her, stopping short and laying her hand on Clark's shoulder again.

"No, I'm sorry. I wasn't being fair to you. It's exactly the thing I would do for any of my friends. I overreacted because, frankly, I'm pissed off."

Clark's brows go up. Because Lana tries to make her voice gentle, and she's not looking at Clark.

"Not at you, Clark," Lana explains and then confuses the heck out of Clark, suddenly frowning and looking directly at Clark. "Well, a little at you. What really happened between you and Whitney? Is it something I should be concerned about? He won't tell me details. Deputies only ask questions, not answering them. If you don't tell me, I don't know..." She's not frowning anymore, she seems lost. "Something's not right. I doubt that you had anything to do with Homecoming dance attack. You never angry," and that's where Clark steps away from her.

"I'm plenty angry, " she says to Lana. "I just don't use other people as an outlet."

"Unlike Whitney?"

"Unlike Whitney, and Sean Kelvin, and Nate Pratt."

"What did they do to you?"

"Why are you asking?" Clark asks, starting down the road again. She runs the whole way from school under five minutes, tops, and doesn't feel even slightly winded, usually. But now, not even a third of the way done, Clark feels tired. "Will it change anything for you?"

"Yes, I'd say it would," Lana says her voice becoming angrier.

"He, they, did almost the same thing they do every year, the same thing they did to Jeremy Creek," Clark says. She wants to get it over with. She wants Lana to understand. She can't say the word, still. She tries to get around of that. "It was slightly more personal for Whitney this time, though. He doesn't like me - because I... like you. And he thinks, maybe, you could have liked me back if I'm around enough, or something, so he wanted to make sure I wouldn't want to be around. I don't know why would he felt threatened by me. Doesn't make sense."

Lana cries, after that.

Clark feels like crying, too. She doesn't, though.

They part ways at Lana's house. Lana looks as though she wants to say something, but doesn't. Clark goes home.

It was a long day.

Her father waits for her on the porch.

The day, obviously, isn't over yet.

***  
At first, her father wants to talk about the call he and Mom got from the school.

"What did the principal say?" Clark asks.

She doesn't get a straight answer.

"Why would it matter what did he say," Jonathan asks, "if you intend to tell me the truth?"

Clark shrugs.

"Whitney accused me of conspiring with Jeremy Creek," she says.

"Why would he do that?" Jonathan asks.

"To counter my accusations?" Clark shrugs. "Because he honestly believes it? Because he wants to blame everything on me? Lana probably will break up with him very soon. He will start to say I'm a devil incarnate, then."

"Lana?" her father asks. There's something in his voice that makes Clark hide her face from him. "The girl you fancy? Why would he think it's your fault?"

"I told her some things about that night, today," Clark says.

Jonathan is quiet after that. They both see Mom hailing some bay out of the barn, or in the barn, Clark can't tell, her stupid heart beats so fast it's hard to concentrate on surroundings. It feels like dying, a little, or what Clark imagines dying feels like. As though there's a ball of hot-cold metal, with spikes, what's moving in her chest. It wants to get outside. It wants Clark to put her hand inside and take it away. She looks at her hands, considering. They're shaking, but they probably could do it.

"Do we have any deliveries scheduled?" Clark asks, gripping the railing.

"Your mother and I do not think it's a good idea for you to be overexerting yourself right now. Go eat, then homework, then rest," her father says. "I would be taking a truck in the evening to deliver all orders."

"I don't want to eat," Clark says. "And I can do my homework tomorrow morning, or even in between periods; you know I can. I don't need rest. And you need to repair the thresher, remember?"

"I would need you to lend a hand," Jonathan says, somewhat reluctantly, because he doesn't always seem okay with Clark lifting much more weight than him, but he obviously glad to have this excuse.

It dumbfounds Clark, that he feels like he needs an excuse because a couple of days before he would just tell her, "You're staying home", and that would be that. A lot of stuff happened to Clark, but what exactly changed?

She feels like she knows. She doesn't want to acknowledge it.  
She claps him on the shoulder. Tries to smile.

"I will be there when you're ready to reassemble it."

She speeds off to Mom, gets the list and the keys for the truck. It's already almost loaded. The last-minute addition is a pie, apparently.

"We want to thank Luthor, so I baked the pie," Mom explains. "If you don't want to see him, it's understandable, it's fine. That's why we wanted Jonathan to make deliveries today."

"Making deliveries is my job," Clark says.

She doesn't meet her mother eyes, but maybe Mom reads something on her face anyway.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay," Clark repeats.

It's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm writing slightly different Kents than in Smallville. They were supportive. Mine - scared of Clark, or, better yet, feel unease. Their lifestyle is threatened, Clark could also very well be a physical threat. I think it's a valid reaction for them, too.  
> Parenthood is scary. Sometimes you fear that you failed your child, sometimes you fear your child.  
> Things will get worse between them before they get better.  
> With Lana, too.  
> Also, can anyone believe that I'm still on a Metamorphosis episode? Yeah. I rewatched it recently, and let me tell you, Lex is very awkward in this and slightly creepy. I want him to do better in this fic, but honestly, I don't know if it will turn out that way. I will try.


	6. Metamorphosis, pt 5

Lex is not there, Clark is told when she's making the delivery.  
The cook signs in for the produce and gives Clark the check. Clark doesn't think she saw this woman in Smallville before. She probably is from Metropolis, as Lex's security guys. She wonders what makes people choose that kind of life, working as 24/7 available living in help. Is money that good? Is money worth it? Is it a pleasant existence? Does it beat alternatives?

She doesn't ask. Not her place. Instead, she's asked by the cook about the tin-foiled pie, because it wasn't in the order.

"No," Clark says, "it's not... It's just, you know. Promotion thing. We're selling baked goods on the side, too."  
She lies. She doesn't want questions.

She is glad to be out of there. Coming back home, after all the deliveries were done, not so much.

Mom is all like, how are you feeling, honey? Do you want to talk about it? And usually, Clark does, yeah. Usually.

She goes to the barn where her father is waiting. He’s just waiting, is the thing. He sits on the stack of hale, his hands clasped tightly before him, his gaze on the machine. It takes some time for him to notice Clark. Mainly because it takes as long for her to step forward.

Engine, transmission and the drum is on one side of the frame, input and output plates, also disconnected from the frame, on the other. The roller, the most dangerous part of the machine because of the sharp blades, and also the heaviest, is on the floor between them on a perfectly equal distance from both piles of parts. It’s glistening, clean and recently oiled.  
It feels good to assemble the equipment. Partly because it seems to shake Jonathan from his mood, making him acknowledge her actual presence and not that he thinks he knows what happened to her. Partly because it is satisfying, placing everything where it should go, where it makes sense for this part to be in, where it has a function, where it does good.

But when all’s done, Clark thinks that if it wasn’t for the thresher, she would have sneaked into her bedroom already and faked being asleep. Maybe would be really asleep, come to think of it. All day long she felt as though she’s wired, ready to run, and now she feels strangely empty. She does not get tired. She doesn’t even know what it feels like. The state she’s in, it’s a little like sickness Clark feels near green rocks, only if that sickness was in her head. Or if she was bored, but the boredness was felt in her body instead.

She shuts down the conversation with her father pretty fast, telling him instead that she signed up for the team try-outs. His concern quickly changes to anger.

“My god,” he says, “isn’t it that led you into this mess? Are you looking to get… Are you looking to get in trouble?”

Clark feels like he said it to her already. She doesn’t remember the occasion, though. His words ring true, even if she knows it’s a load of crap. Is she?  
She needs to get out of here. She climbs the stairs, she thinks she left her school bag here, but she can’t find it even with her vision. Usually, it’s very helpful, her vision. Usually.

Maybe it’s because she’s so focused on blinking away the wetness in her eyes, on keeping her breath steady, that she misses that where’s something up here. Or someone. As evidenced by the footprint it, he, left behind. As evidenced by his psychotic fucking face. Fucking Greg Arkin. Rollerblades of the thresher machine are irreparably bent. Of course, her father doesn’t say anything about that.   
“Why would he do that?” he asks Clark instead when they told Mom what happened and Clark revealed she caught a glimpse of the attacker.

“You were friends in grade school,” Mom adds.

As though it has something to do with it. As though Greg had some perfectly reasonable cause to go around attacking people.

“I saw Lana talking to him today,” Clark mumbles instead. “I asked her to walk me home so we could talk. You know, about. Everything.”

After another round of “Why would you do that?” and “Please, honey, maybe you should stay away from Lana, football and any other things that related to Whitney Fordman?” she is allowed to go to her bedroom.

The next day, the first thing Clark does when she arrives at school is to find Chloe and ask to talk somewhere private. Chloe doesn’t seem surprised up until Clark asks her to tell everything she found out about meteor influence on people. It makes Chloe look at her as though she lost it.

“This?” Chloe asks. “This is what you wanted to talk about?”

So Clark says, “Okay, let’s call Pete. I’m not telling this story twice.”

In the end, it turns out to be the right decision. Chloe finds info about Amazonian tribes where people sometimes mimic the behavior of bugs what bit them. And Pete is the one who reminded Clark about Greg’s fascination with local bugs. It all slots into the place. If they live in the town where are real-live aliens, if green rocks those aliens brought with them upon arrival could make at least one regular person to develop comics-like superpowers, through mutation or magic or some other stuff, they could change another guy into a spiderman too, probably, right?

It would be really cool, Clark thinks later, if not for the fact he ate his own mother. And also tried to kill a bunch of other people. And (yeah, as if the other shit is not enough) outright stalks Lana.

Chloe calls the police. Pete stays with her to wait for them, in case Greg comes back. Clark rushes to Lana and Nell’s house to check on them.

She finds only Whitney in the stable, though, lying on the floor, probably concussed. It doesn’t feel like the previous time. There’s no temptation to leave him there like this, or do something more permanent. Clark doesn’t have time to discern why. Lana doesn’t have this time, probably.

“Are you fit to drive?” Clark asks, and when Whitney nods, tells him where Greg probably took Lana, and to call cops. And then she speeds up to the tree house. And they indeed there.  
Lana is in the creepy cocoon. Greg is posed above her. When he notices Clark, he starts to tell something, smiling smugly. All the speeches Clark had thought of that night, how changes could be scary but your physical condition does not defy who you are, and how she understands the feeling when you just want to hurt someone and it doesn’t make you a bad person, you shouldn’t let it… It all evaporates.  
In her ears only the white noise. Her vision is red. She shoves Greg through the rotten wooden planks of the walls. She leaps after him. She runs after him, follows him, drives him to the abandoned plant.  
There, she makes a couple discoveries about herself. First, as poisonous as green rocks are, lead is a decent enough protection from their influence. Second is that she could watch someone die and not feel anything.  
She just let Greg be crushed.  
It was gross, mainly, as though watching as someone crushed a bug with their shoe. But also necessary. That’s how it felt like at the moment.

She lies, of course, to the police. Says it’s all happened so fast. There’s nothing she could do. They know something is up, though, but they ask her stupid questions like, how did she know where Greg was? How did she know Lana was in danger? They are not satisfied with her responses. When she figures out they don’t intend to take her statement but rather interrogate her, she asks for her parents. She also asks if Lana’s alright.

“Yeah, Ms. Lang is going to be okay,” the deputy, who she remembers vaguely from that night in the field, says. “Mr. Fordman got there just in time.”

Clark’s glad, now, what she didn’t let him die on the road in the car crash.  
Later she would be plagued by thoughts, though, what if Greg shouldn’t have died either?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end of the metamorphosis episode, thank fucking fuck.


End file.
